SINGAPORE

Universities to run apprenticeship degree schemes

Singapore’s thrust on combining classroom learning with workplace experience has graduated to the next level, as two universities launch programmes allowing students to take on jobs and receive sponsorship to study their degrees at the same time, writes Sandra Davie for The Straits Times.

The two universities are the Singapore Institute of Technology, or SIT, and SIM University or UniSIM. SIT will offer the SkillsFuture Work-Study Degree Programmes, as they will be called, in information security, software engineering, hospitality business, electrical power engineering and civil engineering. UniSIM’s programmes will be in the areas of finance and business analytics.

Announcing the SkillsFuture Work-Study Degree Programmes at SIT's graduation ceremony last month, Minister for Education (Higher Education and Skills) Ong Ye Kung noted that such applied pathways were needed to support the increasing proportion of degree holders in Singapore. If, as expected, 40% of each cohort takes the university route by 2020, employers would not hire people simply because they had degrees.
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